Friday, October 2, has arrived. It is neither a public holiday, a red-letter day in the calendar nor any kind of anniversary, but the final day for Manchester City to lodge an appeal. The lawyers representing the club, which was found guilty of breaching 115 financial regulations between 2009 and 2018, will submit their appeal documents, with English broadcaster Sky Sports revealing the Citizens’ strategy and their legal team’s plan to prove their alleged innocence. An independent commission found that City had breached financial fair play rules by presenting 830,000,000 pounds injected into the club by its owner over the years as revenue from sponsorship agreements.##LINKED_NEWS_69496##The club, which has won more Premier League titles than any other side over the past 15 years, will base its appeal on the argument that the additional funds used to pay for sponsorship agreements between 2009 and 2018 did not come from the club’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but from the Abu Dhabi government. However, this argument is nothing new, as City’s lawyers made the same case at the hearing in 2024, only for the commission to reject it. The independent panel concluded that the explanation had been invented after the events in question to conceal a scheme of covert funding. Sheikh Mansour is the majority owner of Newton Investment and Development LLC, which holds a majority stake in the English club. He is also a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family and serves as Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. The connection between Sheikh Mansour and the Abu Dhabi government is therefore clear.##LINKED_NEWS_69476##Sky Sports specialist journalist Kaveh Solhekol sees two problems with the argument City will use in an attempt to overturn the decision and prove their alleged innocence.“Firstly, they already put this forward as an argument during the original hearing in 2024, and the independent commission rejected it at the time. Secondly, how much of a distinction is there, really, between the Abu Dhabi government and Manchester City’s owner? We know there are close links between them. So this is going to be complicated, and it may turn out to be unlikely that an appeal based on the claim that the money came from the government rather than the owner will succeed” he predicted.##LINKED_NEWS_69457##Nevertheless, this will be one of the elements of City’s strategy. The independent commission’s report, published earlier this week, revealed how City unsuccessfully attempted to challenge allegations of a “covert funding scheme” by using precisely the explanation outlined above. At the Etihad, City maintained that their Abu Dhabi sponsors had always been obliged to pay — and had paid — the amounts stated in their financial accounts. They denied that the funds had been provided by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the company owned by Sheikh Mansour that controls City Football Group, or that ADUG’s funds had been used to make the payments.##LINKED_NEWS_69436##City’s legal representatives argued that the sponsors had occasionally sought financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government to help them meet their sponsorship obligations. City therefore maintained, and continues to maintain, that the Premier League wrongly characterised financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government as money originating from ADUG. According to the report, City argued that, “in every single instance”, the amount of government assistance corresponded to the sum that the Premier League had “wrongly alleged” came from ADUG. The commission nevertheless rejected City’s argument, concluding that it was an alibi “conceived long after the events in question, in an attempt to obscure and conceal the true circumstances of the covert funding scheme”.##LINKED_NEWS_69395##The commission also cited an example of the alleged “covert funding scheme” from May 2013. According to the report, City faced the risk of breaching UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations after an unexpected shortfall appeared in its accounts less than a week before the end of the financial year. Within just a few days, City drew up amended sponsorship agreements recording additional revenue from Abu Dhabi sponsors. They did so, the report states, without any prior contact with the sponsors themselves, thereby making up the shortfall and avoiding a breach of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations.##LINKED_NEWS_69353##Now, Manchester City have a plan to prolong the proceedings into next year. The deadline for lodging an appeal expires today, and the Premier League’s new appeal rules stipulate that this stage of the process must be completed within 12 weeks, while the appeal hearing itself must last no longer than five days. However, as we have already mentioned, these are new Premier League regulations. They were not in force in 2023, when the charges were brought, or in 2024, when the hearing took place. The rules were not part of the Premier League’s regulations at the time, and Manchester City would have a strong argument that they should not be applied retrospectively in its case. The new rules were introduced to make it possible for clubs to be sanctioned during the same season in which the breaches occurred. City’s case dates back much further, so do not be surprised if we have to wait well into 2027 for a final outcome.UEFA NATIONS LEAGUE – DIVISION AFriday21.45: (1.53) Belgium (4.30) Turkey (6.00)21.45: (1.45) France (4.50) Italy (7.00)Saturday19.00: (4.10) Croatia (3.50) England (1.90)21.45: (1.07) Spain (13.0) Czech R. (25.0)***odds are subject to change***—————————————————————UEFA – NATIONS LEAGUE BFriday21.45: (2.95) B&H (3.45) Sweden (2.35)21.45: (2.15) Hungary (3.35) Georgia (3.45)21.45: (1.58) Poland (4.00) Romania (5.90)21.45: (1.90) Ukraine (3.40) N.Ireland (4.30)***odds are subject to change***——————————————————————UEFA – NATIONS LEAGUE CFriday17.00: (1.70) Kazakhstan (3.45) Moldova (4.90)19.00: (2.30) Cyprus (3.25) Armenia (2.95)19.00: (4.10) Latvia (3.35) Montenegro (1.85)21.45: (6.00) Faroe I. (3.45) Slovakia (1.60)
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